Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
I guess more just for optics to make other cities sweat where people actually do care, or for the future if somehow the fanbase does grow. If by some miracle, there is another opportunity that goes to a plebiscite in Arizona or elsewhere, they are probably further away from the 51% they need than they were yesterday, if the NHL continues to keep them there at all costs.
The threat of relocation has to be real if the NHL wants to use it when putting pressure on cities, and the only way to make that threat real is to actually do it when something like this fails.
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The threat of relocation only works on desperate cities and fans though. Essentially the only markets these threats work in are the smaller Canadian cities other than Toronto-Montreal-Vancouver, and select smaller cities in the US. Atlanta 'lost' the Thrashers 12 years ago; does anyone really gives a damn? No, they don't. The threat was entirely empty in that market, and it's empty in most NHL markets, because
the NHL needs those markets more than the cities need the NHL. The Atlanta metropolitan area did not suddenly become some podunk town because the NHL team pulled up stakes: a podunk league that
couldn't compete left a bustling metropolis with its tail between its legs.
Talking about this, I think of all the posturing around the Islanders years back. It took essentially two decades to get a Nassau Coliseum replacement built, and there were some tacit threats of relocation, but ultimately these relocation threats rang empty because for the fans on Long Island it was hollow. The Nassau County voters rejected funding the new arena project over 10 years ago, and yeah, the Islanders left... to Brooklyn, for three years, before crawling back. And now they play in a nice shiny arena they funded themselves. Would it have taken away from the "prestige" of Nassau and Suffolk Counties to not have the Islanders playing there? Pfff,
no. It didn't make a difference when the Nets moved to New Jersey in 1977; why would it make a difference if the Islanders left? Many Islanders fans would feel alienated and stop following hockey, but their civic pride was not at stake. The Islanders came back, ponied up the cash to get a solution figured out, and everything's hunky-dory now.
The New York City area is obviously a somewhat special case, in that its
huge population makes it a juggernaut in hosting pro sports, but many of the other big cities in the States also have the same power over a league like the NHL. The NHL is far and away the smallest of the "big 4" sports leagues, and for cities like Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix: frankly it's small potatoes.
Those cities do not define themselves by the presence of a National Hockey League team, in much the same way that Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton don't lament the loss of their Pacific Coast League AAA baseball teams 20 years ago. The threat of relocation has no teeth there.
The Coyotes lucked out in that the Phoenix metropolitan area is a fractured mess of municipal governments seemingly out to #### each other over, and Glendale was gullible enough to take the bait and build an arena in the middle of frickin' nowhere for them to play in. It never should have been built, it was a dumb idea from the beginning, and it worked for a time but reality eventually hit the Coyotes/Glendale like a brick. The whole area is a farce of urban planning, and the very existence of that metropolis is like humanity spitting in the face of God. Hockey in Glendale was never going to work long-term. Football works only because it's one game a week on Sundays. Baseball downtown works... okay. Basketball, same. Hockey in the far-flung 'burbs? Was always a dumb idea.
Glendale wised up and not only let the Coyotes walk: they booted them out and said "don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!" To have subsidized them as long as they did was preposterous, and they finally stopped believing in the sunk cost fallacy and pulled the Band-Aid off. They're no worse for it.
Likewise, if this really is it for the Tempe plan, and for the Phoenix area in general: few will mourn the Coyotes departure. To make a crude analogy: the Coyotes are a deadbeat whom the Phoenix area will happily let walk away from the relationship, and the deadbeat's pleas "you'll be sorry I left!" will be met with rolling eyes and hushed chuckling. Phoenix is a hottie, she'll be just fine without the Coyotes. Only the sad, lonely, desperate cities like Quebec City might fall for the Coyotes' shtick. Other hotties like Houston and Atlanta don't give a flying ####, they've got lots of options.